Magnificent Vibration by Rick Springfield Read Free Book Online Page B

(2.) Dracula, who because of her exasperating absence has caused my heart and Woody to grow fonder and has become the sole focus of my twisted pious/carnal longings. And (3.) Josie, my damaged angel of a sister whom I love with my whole soul, and who has been nothing but good and kind to everyone in this world but whose growing torment (that God has seen fit to allow) is the darkest cloud over my life.
    Before I leave the Mormon-owned Church for the day I head to the Mormon-owned bathroom and crank the Mormon-owned casaba one more time (it’s a wonder it doesn’t drop off). I always have and always will get a special thrill from strangling the one-eyed milkman in an oppressed religious setting. Sorry. I know it’s wrong.
    I arrive back at the house after yet another class on how to be a stormin’ Mormon. These people are taking increasingly more of my time and I have begun to give up on ever seeing the fantasy-inducing recruiter/bloodsucker again. In fact, I have an inkling she was just a hired actressfrom Hollywood who they brought in for the job, to tempt and draft. She may not actually have been a Mormon at all. The real Mormon girls I am meeting are staggeringly uninterested in yours hornily and I am truly tiring of the whole freaking freak show, such is my lack of any real commitment to the cause. I’m beginning to think I was badly duped by Dracula the babe, the breast-heaving siren-witch from Tinseltown.
    It’s not a short walk from the bus stop to our place, and I arrive at our humble home slightly out of breath; obviously I need to start doing some serious cardio. I enter the house to the sounds of an argument in full swing and stop just inside the door to try to get the drift of this quarrel before I have to join it. It’s my mother and father in another of what have become progressively frequent altercations.
    They’re in the kitchen. She sounds hysterical. He sounds stoic.
She:
“Who is she? Why was she calling here? How did she get our number?”
He:
“I’ve no idea.”
She:
“She said she was a ‘friend’ of yours.”
He:
“I can have friends.”
She:
“I told her I was your wife and demanded to know why she was calling . . .
He:
“Oh, Jesus.”
She:
“Don’t talk like that to me.”
He:
“Damnit, Julia.”
She:
“And she said she had no idea you were married.”
He:
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
    I move further into the entryway by a few steps. He sounds culpable even to my untrained ear.
She:
“I need to know what this woman means to you.”
He:
“She’s no one.”
She:
“She didn’t sound like she was no one. I know you’re lying. You just said you didn’t know who she was.”
    The volume is going up. I move closer, unsure if I should let them know I’m here and get involved or stay hidden and stay out of it.
She:
“You said that other woman was the last one. I can’t take this anymore. What must my people at church think?”
He:
“I don’t give a shit about ‘your people’ at the church. This is my—”
She:
“Don’t swear.”
    There is the jarring sound of a dinner plate being thrown into the kitchen sink with great force. It smashes to pieces as silverware clatters around the tile floor and my mother cries out in anguish.
He:
“. . . THIS IS MY LIFE! . . . and . . . you want to know who this woman is? DO YOU?”
    I sense this would be a good time to show myself or this is going to get even uglier. I appear at the kitchen entrance.
Me:
“Will you guys stop yelling and breaking stuff! You’re upsetting Josie! She doesn’t need to hear all this!”
    They both look like stunned rabbits on a railroad track as the train bears down.
    “Horatio,” is all my mother says, and she bursts into tears.
    My father brushes past me without a word, knocking me into the wall, and exits the house. I run after him, unsure why I am doing it exactly. Somewhere in me I know he is only adding to my mother’s pain by leaving. But he has driven away before I even make it